I have always loved the idea of choosing my own path in a game. Moral dilemmas make virtual worlds more interesting. Sometimes they change the outcome and give you a reason to play the game all over again. But as much as I like the idea, I often struggle to take the evil route. I'll replay a game with the intention of being bad, yet I find myself being a Good Samaritan again.
I first noticed this with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Having finished the game as a Jedi, I wanted to go back and play as a Sith. But I was always compelled to choose the light side. Apparently, I'm not alone. Megan Starks, senior narrative designer at Obsidian Entertainment, the game studio behind titles like The Outer Worlds, Tyranny, and Fallout: New Vegas, says about 97 percent of its players prefer to align with the good path over an evil one.
“We could say, ‘Well then, why bother making a less morally good path at all? That's a lot of time and resources to develop a choice that most players won't ever experience.' But having the choice itself is what's important,” Starks writes in an email.
Without choice, things can get boring fast. It’s important to feel like you’re steering events and that you have some say over who your character is and where you’re going. That's especially true in open-world games with the freedom of mobility and involved plots.
“Fiction imitates life, and to create a believable world for an audience to immerse themselves in, it needs to contain some portrayal of a moral system,” Starks says. “Because if you have absolutely no wrong or risk of wrong, there is no conflict, and if you have no conflict, you have no story that an audience is interested in experiencing.”
It used to be so straightforward. When I think back to games like Black & White, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Fable, there was no moral ambiguity. Every action had a judgment attached. For example, in Fable, the more atrocities you committed, the scarier you'd look to those around you. In other games, it would link directly to a points system.
Red Dead Redemption had an honor system, though if you pulled a bandana over your face, outlaw-style, you could commit murder, robberies, and other evil acts with impunity. In the sequel, your honor rating changes regardless of whether you hide your face. It has a more pronounced impact, changing the way people in the game react to you, the way the central character Arthur Morgan carries himself, and how things end.
As games have matured, morality systems have grown more complex. Many developers simply don’t give you the option of taking the high road anymore. Sometimes there’s so much gray you can’t see what’s right. It might be choosing the least bad path, rather than the good path.
“If the choice is always easy, it becomes boring and also causes us to spend a lot of time developing content no one will experience,” Starks says. “If we make the choices ‘shades of gray’ or types of ‘good to neutral’ or ‘low-stakes jerkish,’ players are more likely to weigh the pros and cons of each and select more variety in the options.”
I spent a long time agonizing over whether to hook up the sole power station to Edgewater or the Botanical Lab in The Outer Worlds, knowing it would condemn the faction I didn’t choose. After a lot of back and forth, I managed to find a compromise that made both parties happy, persuading the leader of Edgewater to leave. But that depth of choice is rare.
While Obsidian's data might show its players are often choosing the good path, that doesn't mean all gamers are usually on the side of right. A Baylor University study researched how people approach moral choices in video games and focused on three scenarios:
- The infamous “No Russian” mission from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, where you are a part of a terrorist group and can choose to slaughter innocent civilians at an airport, kill only guards, or choose not to shoot at all.
- The “Power of the Atom” mission from Fallout 3, where you can defuse the bomb for a small reward or detonate it and destroy the town for a big payout.
- The “Free Labor” mission from Fallout 3, where you can kidnap or spare a baby.
The results? Just as many people opted for the evil path as for good, according to Daniel Shafer, associate professor in the Department of Film and Digital Media at Baylor University. The roughly 49 percent of people who chose the good path were “morally activated,” meaning they felt empathy for the nonplayable characters (NPCs), felt guilt at the prospect of doing evil, or were trusting their instincts about what felt right.
“I think many people find it hard to make evil choices in games, and gravitate toward the good,” Shafer says. “I think this is because most people find it hard to enjoy being cruel or evil.”
Those who did choose the evil route fell in line with Albert Bandura’s notion of moral disengagement, which is when people suspend their usual ethics to act against their moral standards without guilt or shame. But Shafer says several asserted they did what they did "because it was ‘just a game,’ and so the act had no real moral weight.” Other common justifications include the idea of only following orders, adhering to the game rules, and doing what's necessary to survive or complete the mission.
Interestingly, there was no significant difference in how much people enjoyed the game whether they took the good or evil path.
While some people might struggle to go full-on Vader for a whole game, there is a middle ground. You can emulate the roguish Han Solo (I’m talking original-cut Star Wars here) and shoot first from time to time. Lie to make a little more profit, steal things you want, insult unlikeable NPCs, and even kill characters who seem to deserve it.
“These are, of course, not things you can or should do in real life, but they are actions that can provide a sense of catharsis or stress relief,” Starks says. “Your brain can act out a situation that would otherwise be too dangerous or detrimental in real life, or revel in a power fantasy if you're feeling trapped in a society that maybe doesn't give you a lot of power.”
Most of us have been conditioned to choose the good path, especially by game developers who have traditionally bestowed the biggest rewards and best endings on those who don't go on a murderous escapade. But that’s definitely changing. You don’t have to be the white knight. Sometimes the protagonist is a bit of a dick, like Kratos in God of War, or a flat-out psychopath like Trevor Phillips in Grand Theft Auto V, and it can feel good to shed the stress of real-life consequences for a few hours. Much depends on how things are framed.
“All options presented in a choice, at least the more significant ones, should be balanced by either having consequences to each or benefits to each (or both),” Starks says. “And sometimes if there is a correct or incorrect choice with a certain character or faction, it needs to depend on the preferences and morality of that specific character and faction versus a larger sense of right and wrong.”
Too much choice can lead to choice paralysis for me. I try to resist the urge to scan online gameplay guides and forums and find out if my choice is going to have terrible consequences later in the game, because I know it will ruin the tension and break immersion. And in games like Prey, The Witcher 3, and The Outer Worlds, there are many moments where the right thing to do is debatable even when you have all the facts.
“Not everything can be high-tension, high-stakes, world-changing decisions all the time,” Starks says. “We try to make sure we provide enough low stakes, entertaining moral choices without larger consequences as you explore the game's world. Those are like soaking in a soothing warm bath, so that when you do get to a big moral choice moment with impactful consequences, it's like a shock of cold water that really grabs your attention and marks itself into your memory.”
This makes me think of Fallout 4. With multiple factions holding incompatible world views, the game eventually forces you to choose who to side with. But this agonizing choice doesn’t come until near the end, after you’ve gotten to know characters and battled alongside them, which makes betraying and murdering them a bitter pill to swallow.
As I rampaged through the Brotherhood of Steel’s airship slaughtering my old comrades, I felt a hot flush of shame. It was tough and emotional, but it certainly made for a memorable ending. We may crave the moral certainty of good versus evil, but it’s rarely that clear-cut in the real world.
Perhaps having more morally gray choices is a sign that games better reflect our lives now. I appreciate the added complexity in modern games, but, like a lot of great art, the choices I make can be challenging and, sometimes, upsetting.
